FishinWonn

Jaaron, I tried out the washer idea today - works like a charm. Now you can't hand tighten it hard enough to keep it from moving, but still give if the boat hits something. But it is snug enough that it'll stay in place, or by pushing on the handle, you can quickly raise the rudder. Now if I hit something going forward, it will easily push the rudder up and out of the way. Going backwards is a different story, but I can simply have the back-seater person lift the rudder up if I need to go backwards at a high rate of speed. Thanks for the presenting that concern - probably saved me a broken rod-holder. I'll try to get a step-by-step setup on Instructables.com soon for anyone that wishes to see more details of the installation.

Good point Jaaron. Off the top of my head, there are two ways to mitigate this problem. The first is to angle the oar up, so that the fat part of the oar is just under the surface. Locking it in at that angle, the boat will be deeper than the oar. The second way is to prevent the teeth on the rod-holder from locking into each other. You could probably put a big metal washer between the teeth to do this. That way, you could still hand-tighten the oar in position, but if you hit something going too fast, the metal washer should let the oar angle up and out of the water. I'm going to try this option and see how it works. Thanks again to Jaaron for pointing that out.

RAIDER RUDDER Saw some talk about adding a rudder to the Bass Raider 10e to keep it from being blown around in the wind. However, I don't have access to a welder like some of the people who posted pics of their rudders. Been thinking about how to do this for awhile and eventually came up with the idea to use an oar as the rudder - but couldn't figure out how to mount it until I was wandering through the aisles at Dick's Sporting Goods the other night. Here's what I came up with: Instructions Purchase the following items at Dick's (found all these items in the same aisle) 1. Black oar = $25 2. Scotty Baitcaster/Spinning Rod Holder = $25 3. Caviness Clamp-on Oar-Locks = $10 4. Two small bolts, nuts, and pressure-washers (I had these in my shop already, think it was 1/4" thick bolts and approx. 1.5 inches long) *I think there are 2 sizes of Scotty Rod Holders, I got the smaller one. I was able to take the oar and test fit it into the rod-holder in the store. Make sure it's a tight fit, leaving little room. Once you attach the oar-lock (see below), it will definitely be tight and hopefully won't turn much. - unmount the metal plate from the rear of the Bass Raider - drill 2 holes in the plate using the rod-holder as your hole guide (see pics for how it's mounted), make sure you don't put them to near the edge of the plate (to accommodate for the screw heads) - insert a bolt in each hole of the plate and up into the rod-holder mount - insert pressure-washer and nut into each hole of rod-holder and tighten down - attach clamp-on oar lock to oar at desired depth (remove oar-lock pin from oar-lock) - insert oar handle up into rod-holder, then pull down on oar so the oar-lock seats into the rod-holder - attach rubber strap to secure oar The rod holder allows you to adjust the angle of the rudder (oar) so that you can compensate for shallow water or remove it from the water when coming ashore. Also, this will give you an extra oar in the event your battery dies and both fisherman need to paddle back to the dock. I haven't field-tested this yet, but seems like it'll work pretty good. Will let you know soon. *more Wonnmeister Raider Mods coming soon

Just bought me a Bass Raider 10e at Dick's. They wanted $599.99 for it, but I got them to do a price-match with Academy for $499.99. I'm in Virginia and the nearest Academy is 8 hours away in Tennessee. Just print the page from Academy and take it to Dick's manager.